In this 27 minute black and white short film, viewers are introduced to Keon, a young black photographer who spends the day in Minneapolis trying to acquire a new camera so that he may finish his portfolio — a necessary component of his college application. One becomes quickly enamored with the playful, joyous, and talented Keon as he spends the day taking photos of his brothers and friends in Minneapolis. 

Throughout the short film, however, viewers are exposed to the erasure of Black joy. Throughout the film, White men approach Keon asking him to stop taking photos and leave public areas. For example, Keon is asked to stop taking pictures on the metro, Keon and his friends are asked to leave a coffee shop, and Keon is even chased out of a yard — all by White men.

What viewers witness is the erasure of Black bodies from public spaces throughout the city, and simultaneously, they watch Keon’s spark diminish slightly each time he is asked to take his passion for photography elsewhere. The short ends abruptly and dramatically when two White police officers stop Keon and his brothers, walking through what appears to be a back alley in South Minneapolis. Keon slowly raises his hands at the law enforcement officers’ requests — showing a slight hesitancy as his camera is in his hands. But it is at that moment; the two officers mistake his camera for a gun — shooting Keon dead in the alley.

“Keon” is a powerful film. E.G. Bailey carefully crafts this important narrative– a narrative known all too well by Black Americans. But this film is not just about the current epidemic in this country of law enforcement officers killing Blacks. This film is about the erasure of Black joy and Black bodies from our public spaces. Throughout the film, viewers are struck by how often Keon and his friends are asked to vacate public spaces. They are seen as loud and unruly — despite the fact they are simply attempting to compile a college entrance portfolio.

Two other shorts only strengthen this underlying message about erasure found in “Keon” in the Activism category: “Never Turn Your Back to the Wave — The Travis Jordan Story” and “Ignited States.” These two films continue to document police killings of Black men in Minnesota. 

The first tells the story of Travis Jordan, who when two rookie White cops killed when they responded to a wellness call. The county has ruled the death justified. “Ignited States,” directed by Jud Nichols, continues the narrative of anti-Black violence in its documentation of the protests and speeches of politicians in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. It respectfully documents the South Minneapolis community’s confusion, grief, anger, and hope for change. It challenges the state’s response to protests, concluding with a simple message: “you can’t protect without love.”

Together, these activism shorts relay powerful messages about White violence against Blacks in America, specifically in Minnesota. While highlighting police brutality, these shorts illustrate the depth of the issue; violence against Black Americans does not just happen at the hands of the police; it occurs through everyday actions and attempts to remove Black joy from the public sphere. The impact of these films are especially poignant in the wake of last year’s recorded murder of George Floyd and the extrajudicial killing of Winston Smith earlier this year. These police killings and the films in which they tragically inspired have provoked difficult conversations about race, law enforcement, and justice in the Twin Cities.

Tomorrow marks one year since the murder of George Floyd at 38th and Chicago in South Minneapolis, sparking a rebellion that burned a police precinct and much of a nearby commercial strip. In the days that followed, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council declared their intention to “dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). This declaration seemed to place the city at the forefront of a national conversation to reimagine public safety and redress racialized police violence. And yet, although the people of Minneapolis largely agree about the need for systematic changes in policing, residents, activists, and policymakers continue to disagree about the nature and scope of those transformations. These political struggles have complicated efforts to dismantle the MPD.

As I wrote on scatterplot last summer, periods of upheavalrarely produce total abandonment of the status quo, but political leaders, activists, and community members can use such openings to shift the direction of policies, practices, and institutional and cultural arrangements. Those words ring even truer today. Nearly a year following the declaration, the MPD remains standing, but changed, as the city continues to struggle over how to create “safety for all” in a starkly unequal society. Fights over public safety are central to the upcoming election, where city residents will vote on a new charter amendment to replace the MPD with a Department of Public Safety and re-elect or vote out of office the council members who have fought for (or resisted) these changes and the Mayor who has rebuffed calls to dismantle the MPD.

I started writing this post several weeks ago, trying to map out the many developments in public safety over the past year. But the details soon grew too long for the format, threatening to turn a blog post into the book I’m currently writing on policing in Minneapolis. Instead, here I’ll provide several links to local reporting on these issues and then focus on the charter amendment. 

These changes include:

• Police reforms led by the Mayor and MPD’s Chief, in part through a court order imposed by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. These include a ban on chokeholds, a new “duty to intervene” requirement for officers, and ongoing reforms to training and misconduct policies and practices.
• Expanded violence interruption teams, including community patrols during the unrest, the Chauvin trial, and spikes in gun violence.
• A 5% cut to the MPD’s 2021 budget to fund violence prevention programs and a new mobile mental health crisis response program.
• The ousting of MPD from the city’s public schools and their replacement with civilian safety specialists (some of whom have a law enforcement background).
• The torching of the third precinct and successful resistanceto resiting the precinct within the ward.
• The “autonomous” George Floyd Square, which is still barricaded and managed by community members opposed to police presence in the neighborhood.
• State-level police reforms passed in 2020, which banned chokeholds (in most cases) and strengthened community involvement in Minnesota’s law enforcement licencing board. A new package of bills is currently under consideration in Minnesota (though is being blocked by Senate Republicans), which would eliminate most pretext vehicle stops by police and require the state licencing board to regulate officer support for white supremacist groups.

In addition, the events of this summer have pushed a cultural shift–prompting citizens, community leaders, and law enforcement to change. Residents have been increasingly drawn into the political struggles over public safety. Images of George Floyd and signs for “Justice for George” are ubiquitous across the city, even as residents and city leaders who support the MPD in the city have grown more organized. Officers have also left the force in record numbers, citing trauma from the unrest and frustration with elected officials, reducing the MPD’s size by 20% without any change in the charter. Indeed, it is this shrinking of the police force through attrition (not policy change) that has brought the number of MPD officers below the staffing levels required in the current city charter–opening the city up to a lawsuit filed by some community members who argue that the city has not adequately protected them. These safety concerns have been particularly acute in North Minneapolis, home to many Black residents, where gun violence has spiked since the start of the pandemic,* with community leaders demanding the city address these pressing safety concerns.

The city also agreed to  a record-breaking $27 million civil settlement for George Floyd’s family, announced just weeks before Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder. (The city and state also spent millions rebuilding from the unrest and fortifying downtown during the trial.) State and federal criminal cases against both Chauvin and the three other involved officers continue. In addition, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are both continuing civil rights investigations into the MPD’s policies and practices. Both investigations could lead to additional consent decrees forcing the city to further reform the MPD. In some cities, DOJ consent decrees have mandated cities spend more on police training and staffing, changes that may contradict the proposed charter amendment.

Last summer, after the June declaration by a majority of Minneapolis City Councilmembers, the council put forward an initiative to replace the MPD in the city charter with a Community Safety and Violence Prevention department. This charter amendment represented the most concrete effort to dismantle the MPD in the wake of the June 2020 declaration, though not all the councilmembers who took to the stage emblazoned with “DEFUND POLICE” supported the proposal. By city governance rules, any changes to the charter must be reviewed by the city’s Charter Commission, an appointed board tasked with providing a recommendation to the city council. In August, the city’s charter commission ran out the clock on their review of the proposal, effectively blocking its appearance on the 2020 ballot.

This initiative, however, was re-proposed in 2021, supported by both several city council members and a popular ballot initiative organized by Yes 4 Minneapolis. In November, Minneapolis voters will decide whether they want to replace the MPD in the city charter with a new Department of Public Safety, an initiative that has so far polled favorably but remains deeply contested. The new department would include alternative first responders alongside law enforcement, though it is unclear what the numerical balance will be between the different units. (Under the language of the Yes 4 Minneapolis amendment, the department will include “licensed peace officers if necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of the department.” State law requires the city to have police, making them “necessary” according to the language of the proposal.) It is also unclear how the shift from MPD to the new Public Safety department would impact ongoing negotiations with the police officers’ federation, with officers (and their contract) presumably shifting automatically to the new department if it passes. The amendment would also move power over the department from the Mayor to the City Council, a shift long supported by some councilmembers.

Supporters argue that the charter is the first step in reimagining policing and creating a structure for the city to develop holistic public safety interventions. The Mayor and many of his allies (including business leaders and some community leaders), however, have pushed back on these calls, arguing that it would defund (with the goal of ultimately abolishing) the MPD. They argue such moves would endanger public safety in a time of rising crime. The charter amendment also faces resistance from other activist groups, who argue that it may worsen the accountabilityproblem by shifting power to the council. One group of critics is working to propose an alternative charter amendment for community control of the police.

These divides–between more status-quo reform and radical transformations and among groups calling for radical changes vs. abolition–are part of a broader struggle in left-leaning cities in the U.S. Since the summer, a split has more publicly emerged between those who support police reform (or efforts to minimize certain kinds of police violence, particularly lethal killings of civilians, through policy and practice reforms), and abolitionists, who want to literally abolish the police (and, for many, abolish capitalism), reducing police violence by shrinking the number of police-civilian interactions. Even among activists who identify police abolition or radical transformations in public safety as the ultimate end-goal, however, tensions about how to start the journey toward that horizon remain.

Largely due to these struggles over public safety, the Mayor and the President of the City Council are no longer on speaking terms. The Mayor recently held a press conference about a spate of gun violence in North Minneapolis, which critically injured two children and killed 6-year-old Aniya Allen. Standing behind him were several of the community leaders and city councilmembers who have supported the Mayor’s plans; he did not invite the two Northside representatives who have championed the new models of violence prevention co-opted in the Mayor’s new safety plan. In November, Minneapolis residents will decide the fate of the public safety amendment, select a new Mayor or re-elect the incumbent, Jacob Frey, and vote for the full slate of city councilmembers (including one who will become the new City Council President). Residents will also vote on another charter amendment–the “strong mayor” proposal–which would give the Mayor more control over the operations of city departments (akin to the control he currently wields over the MPD).

In short, public safety in Minneapolis is changing quickly and in multiple, and at times contradictory, directions. It will likely shift even more after November and the conclusion of the DOJ investigation. While the June declaration to dismantle the MPD didn’t immediately “end” the MPD, it has dramatically altered local politics. It is unsurprising that crime–and gun violence in particular–has become a wedge issue in this struggle. Police represent, alternatively, the ideal of state protection and the threat of state violence, often to the same people, a tension legal scholar Monica Bell describes as the conundrum of Black security. Community members in the neighborhoods most impacted by over policing and under-protection often describe wanting both deep structural transformations in policing and more protection from exposure to violence in the community. While calls for more policing are a common response to rising violence, law enforcement is often a poor mechanism for producing the broader social fabric needed to prevent victimization. This means that “safety for all” cannot end with police reform–or even public safety transformations–but rather requires redressing the vastly unequal social conditions of residents in Minneapolis and across the country.

*Rises in some kinds of violent crime, including shootings, in 2021 and 2021 have often been attributed to changes in policing or criminal justice policies in the media. But police (and courts) are just one piece of a much bigger puzzle in society that drives crime up or down. There are lots of reasons to think that the pandemic, which disrupted so many parts of life, had a causal impact on crime. The pandemic pushed kids out of school buildings and adults out of employment and daily life on streets across the country. Abolitionists also note that the definition of crime is itself socially constructed and largely focuses on the kinds of harm committed by the least privileged in society. This framework argues we ought to treat deaths from preventable sickness (including COVID-19) and other kinds of structural violence with the same importance and urgency as homicides.

Thanks to Josh Page, Amber Joy Powell, and Christopher Robertson for their insightful suggestions.

Michelle Phelps is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing on mass probation, criminal justice transformation, and policing.

However, at almost every turn, these protests and calls for justice, accountability, and respect for fundamental human rights have been unduly met with harsh resistance and actively combatted through violent and illegal means by law enforcement. 

Take, for example, the manner in which the Minneapolis Police Department fired rubber bullets and tear gas upon citizens protesting the heinous murder of George Floyd. In India, scenes of peaceful protesters beaten, hosed with water cannons, and choked in tear gas brought global attention to new laws affecting the farming industry. Moreover, we can also look at the tragic events of “The Lekki Massacre” on October 20th, 2020, as the Nigerian Army fired at and killed their own citizens peacefully protesting at the Lekki toll gate.

The violent response to these protests is highly concerning for several reasons. Of course, it is truly troubling and sickening to see individuals lose their lives for merely seeking to exercise their internationally guaranteed human rights. At the same time, it is deeply disturbing and alarming to see just how easily law enforcement and nation-states are willing to flout international law and standards in their efforts to suppress peaceful protestors and their message(s). 

The right to protest has been under a concerted attack from nation-states within recent years, with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom attempting to impose blanket bans on protesters, which were then overruled by courts. However, the violent resistance which has befallen protesters across the globe in 2020 has taken this attack to a new extreme as states use public health concerns in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic to further restrict protests. 

At almost every step, we have seen states comfortably disregard internationally accepted standards and practices, actively putting their citizens at risk of serious harm and danger. We have seen police deploy tear gas, classified as a chemical warfare agent and banned under the 1925 Geneva Protocol for use in war. Yet, we saw law enforcement agencies across the United States use tear gas against civilians throughout the summer 2020 BLM protests. 

Police also used Kinetic Energy rounds (rubber bullets), demonstrating the weapon’s devastating effects on protestors. Unlike traditional bullets, which pierce the skin, rubber bullets are designed to strike someone with blunt force. However, a 2017 study found that three percent of people hit by rubber bullets died from the injury sustained, and a further 15% were permanently injured.

The summer 2020 protests in Minneapolis tell a similar story as Humphrey School Graduate, Soren Stevenson, was left with serious eye damage after being struck by a rubber bullet. In the Lekki Massacre, the Nigerian state unleashed the force of its military against peacefully protesting citizens, further demonstrating the extreme harm caused by these weapons as they injured dozens, leading to a tragic and heinous loss of life. So devastating are the potential effects of rubber bullets that Dr. Rohini Haar states: “using them against unarmed civilians is a huge violation of human rights.” 

What truly compounds this gross violation of international human rights is the continued overall lack of accountability for these violations. Barring a few hearings held at the international level, there has been little done by way of accountability for states openly committing crimes against humanity and other such human rights violations. Calls to suspend future sales of tear gas equipment to the US in the UK fell upon deaf ears. Authorities in Nigeria attempted to cover up the true death toll of the Lekki Massacre. The international community has displayed a collective ambivalence towards the plight of India’s farming community, save for minor commentary from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

On the one hand, it is encouraging to see the beginnings of conversations seeking to hold governments and police forces accountable for their actions against peaceful protesters. We welcome the finding that the City of Portland was in contempt for violating orders limiting the use of tear gas. It is also positive to see state and local lawmakers begin the push for the police to use “less lethal” weapons. However, these are only tiny steps to address a much larger problem.

The continued assault on the right to protest by nation-states is an extremely dangerous and troubling trend. We as citizens run the risk of having one of our fundamental human rights drastically altered and eroded. The fact that so many of the world’s leading nations have been allowed to take such drastic, disproportionate, and unlawful measures to curtail the right to protest is a frightening reality.

Moreover, the lack of accountability with which these nations have been able to usurp international law represents an egregious failure to uphold basic human rights. The right to assemble and peacefully protest is one of the most centrally important human rights guaranteed to each of us. It is a right that needs not only to be protected but championed to the highest degree possible. The manner in which this right has been attacked in recent years is a trend which each of us needs to work diligently to debunk. NGOs, nation-states, and multilateral agencies such as the UN must do more to not only protect the rights of protesters, but also hold accountable the nations and actors who would seek to curtail the exercise of this right.

Sarah Allis is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program, concentrating on research methods.

Joy Hammer is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in international conflict and security.

Paul Olubayo is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in International Justice and Human Rights Law. Paul presently works at an international Anti-Slavery organization.

Hannah Shireman is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in research methods. 

Bailey Sutter is a second-year Master of Human Rights student with a concentration in racial justice, education, and the school to prison pipeline.

Vanesa Mercado Diaz is a second-year Master of Human Rights student with a concentration in women’s rights, migration, and Latin America. 

Raven Ziegler is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in business and human rights.

The media covered the protests in such a way that even those who had previously dismissed racial issues paid close attention, learning about the history of racism beyond the cursory and sanitized explanations given to us in the American education system. Now, attention was turned to recognizing the persistent inequities within our society, even with the increasing partisanship that has been a feature in the Trump administration. The media portrayal of these protests, however, was not without its own bias. The constant depiction of force used by law enforcement and the national guard without discussion of whether or not it was warranted had the effect of desensitizing the American public to the violence experienced by protestors. 

The coverage of these protests centered on two main narratives. Politicians asked protesters to moderate their emotions and actions and, in many instances, imposed curfews to curb the protests. Meanwhile, discussions from media pundits walked a fine line of supporting the Black Lives Matter movement while simultaneously portraying actions like property damage and attempts to incite violence as widespread. These allegations were hastily made despite having little evidence to support claims that protestors aligned with movements like Black Lives Matter were involved in such incidents. News stories also showed the massive deployment of law enforcement and mobilization of the national guard, accompanied by accounts of the use of so-called “non-lethal weapons,” such as tear gas and rubber bullets, against protestors.

According to a study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, nearly 95% of the protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement this summer were characterized as peaceful. However, this was not the prevalent narrative depicted within media sources. Rather than contribute to a calm resolution to the situation, politicians and law enforcement’s actions and rhetoric to “crack down” on protests escalated tensions in many cities.

As Americans, we must ask ourselves the following. Why are peaceful protests calling for racial equity and police accountability immediately met with armed members of law enforcement in riot gear? In fact, a 2011 study of 15,000 protests dating from 1960 to 1990 shows that even after taking into account protester behavior including “throwing objects, using weapons, and damaging property,” law enforcement were more likely to respond with violence against Black-led protests than White-led ones. Historically,  anti-racism movements have been labeled as terrorist groups. Following the 2020 summer protests, we saw this rhetoric once again readily used by the Trump administration and law enforcement groups in attempts to reduce the credibility of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This stands in stark contrast to the treatment of mostly white, pro-Trump supporters protesting COVID-19 lockdown measures and election results. Beginning with “Operation Gridlock” in mid-April, to armed protestors and increasingly violent rhetoric in May, protests organized by conservative groups in Michigan grew increasingly aggressive. Yet arrests were only recently made in the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer. In the Kenosha, WI protests in late August, Kyle Rittenhouse was not only peacefully arrested after shooting three protestors and killing two, but reporting also shows local police forces did nothing to stop him. Why weren’t these incidents met with the same amount of force or tactics such as the use of “non-lethal weapons”?

The disparities in treatment, however, come as no surprise when we look at the history of Black people in the United States and their fight for equality. The Selma march in spring 1965, led by civil rights activist and former Representative John Lewis, is a clear example of a peaceful protest that was brutally attacked by police instigators. Championed by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders, the message of nonviolence within the Civil Rights movement has been maintained as the ideal form of protest. However, this message has also been co-opted by critics ready to denounce civil rights movements by holding protestors to an impossible moral standard. 

It is evident that the history between police forces and African-American communities has always been tense. Still Professor Keisha Blain of Harvard University has helped make a direct connection between policing and the subjugation of these communities through her close examination of the history of policing within the United States as a form of control.

Police violence against protestors in Minneapolis is part of a long history of anti-Blackness that attempts to suppress people exercising their right to peacefully protest when their demands call into question the status quo. The discrepancy in the treatment between protestors who are demanding that people’s right to life be respected and protected through increased police accountability and those who are protesting pandemic lockdown measures and election results serves as a stark reminder of the continued violent treatment of civil rights protests, which must cease to be normalized in our country. Protesters asking for an end to their family and community members being extra-judiciously murdered by law enforcement officers hired to serve their communities should not be met with violence and the use of “non-lethal” weapons in turn as they march for their rights.

**This blog is the first of a two-part series on the normalized suppression of peaceful protests against racism and police brutality in the United States. 

The authors are a group of alumni and current graduate students affiliated with the Master of Human Rights Program at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. They are currently conducting an independent research project documenting the experiences of protestors who witnessed violence enacted by law enforcement during the Summer 2020 anti-racism and police brutality protests following the death of George Floyd.

Sarah Allis is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program, concentrating on research methods.

Joy Hammer is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in international conflict and security.

Paul Olubayo is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in International Justice and Human Rights Law. Paul presently works at an international Anti-Slavery organization.

Hannah Shireman is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in research methods. 

Bailey Sutter is a second-year Master of Human Rights student with a concentration in racial justice, education, and the school to prison pipeline.

Vanesa Mercado Diaz is a second-year Master of Human Rights student with a concentration in women’s rights, migration, and Latin America. 

Raven Ziegler is an alumnus of the Master of Human Rights program with a concentration in business and human rights.

In an article exploring the relationship between social movements and genocide, Aliza Luft suggests that the discipline of genocide studies has been mainly composed of historians who have largely abandoned theoretical explanations of genocide in favor of rich, historical analyses. These historical pieces have broadened the field of genocide studies, focusing on the historical moment and context of each genocide. Luft, using the theoretical perspectives developed by social movement scholars, however, demonstrates how this sociological literature could enhance genocide studies.

I want to make clear that this blog post does not seek to equate social movements with historical or contemporary genocides. It is not my intention to say that social movements are genocides. Rather, I seek to illustrate that these two phenomena operate on a spectrum of contentious politics, and both social movement scholars and genocide scholars may learn more about their respective disciplines by looking at the commonalities and differences between them. Furthermore, I seek to suggest, that maybe genocide scholars could learn a few things by turning to this contemporary moment in the US.

Aliza Luft is not the first to call for a more integrated approach between social movements and mass violence. Social movements and genocide are both types of contentious politics that are centered around changing the status quo — albeit in drastically different ways. While the motives of genocide perpetrators and social movement activists may differ across empirical cases, what remains consistent and worth analyzing are the myriad of ways in which individuals are mobilized and goals are communicated.

So what exactly are contentious politics? Contentious politics are characterized by the government as being an object of claims or the third party to such claims. Claims can be defined as a call for action, and if realized, claims affect the interests of the object (McAdam et al. 2007: 2). Within contentious politics, there are three main properties: political opportunity structures (or more simply, the idea that protests can occur when it is tolerated by the public), collective actors, and performances and repertoires.

Thus, social movements are often included within the scope of contentious politics. Social movements can be understood as sustained challenges to power; these challenges are made in the name of those whom power is held over (McAdam et al. 2007: 19) Given the three properties of contentious politics and the characteristic of claim making, genocide and mass killing also qualify as types of contentious politics; thus contentious politics becomes an umbrella term under which social movements and genocide become linked. What holds these various forms of contention together is the ability of social movements and genocides to mobilize individuals into action regardless of different uses of resources and contexts. 

Social movement scholars have called for more comparative casework across different forms of contentious politics. Sidney Tarrow has suggested that these subfields of social movements and contentious politics more broadly are problematic, as they must be considered dynamic and fluid. 

For example, Rachel Einwohner, using the example of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, demonstrates how collective action can occur under conditions of genocide — in conditions characterized by repression and threat. She demonstrates that social movements and genocide need not be mutually exclusive. Owens and Snow also explore the relationship between genocide, mass violence, and social movements. Using four historical cases of genocide and mass violence, the authors show how these phenomena occur within the context of social movement and political organizations. 

Transitions can occur, and often do, between various forms of contention. Mass violence can be perpetrated in response to social movements, as we see with the Arab Spring and ongoing violence in Syria. Social movements can occur within a genocide, as well, as we see with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Genocide and mass violence do not occur in isolation. They do not occur in a vacuum. And thus, it does not make sense or advance the literature to study these phenomena in isolation.

Collective actors operating in genocide are pulling from the same tool kit as those in social movements. Theories regarding the mobilization of participants and the opening and closing of political opportunity structures demonstrate interesting comparisons between these two forms of contentious politics. Perhaps one of the most interesting comparisons centers around the use of framing, or how the movement or government communicates its cause.

Both the fields of genocide studies and social movements could greatly benefit from incorporating various forms of contentious politics, moving past a discourse that seeks to evaluate which types of contentious politics are worthy of comparison. When we stop isolating genocide and look at it in relation to social movements and other forms of contentious politics, we can start to ask why particular forms of contention result in mass violence and others do not. And perhaps, if we stop seeing genocide and mass violence as exceptional and inherently unique, than maybe we can start to consider how genocide is a social movement of the elite. 

Perhaps in doing so, we’d be more willing to look at our domestic systems of power and social movements and consider how they relate to the phenomena we study. As someone who studies genocide, I’m often preoccupied with my own research of genocide in Rwanda and mass violence in Sierra Leone, and for many who study genocide, we often look outside of where we call home. Myself, and other genocide scholars, must be more willing to look at the various forms of contentious politics in our own backyard and abroad.

Jillian LaBranche is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and a Research Assistant at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests broadly include violence, knowledge, collective memory, and comparative methods. Her research seeks to understand how societies that recently experienced large-scale political violence teach about this violence to the next generation.

This legal framework for genocide itself can be traced back to 1944, in the midst of World War II, when the horrors of the Holocaust were being increasingly brought to the forefront. Jurist Raphael Lemkin published a series of guidelines that would allow for the prosecution of the heinous Nazi crimes.

In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws Of Occupation, Analysis Of Government, Proposals For Redress Lemkin culminated his years of work defining and redefining what he considered the crime of crimes. The legal language found in the Genocide Convention, however, differs greatly from that in Axis Rule. Fortunately, many scholars have carried the torch of Lemkin forward, continuing to examine how we define genocide.

From this scholarly work, we can find a more nuanced and expanded approach to genocide that has allowed us to examine the events of the past with a more critical lens. Events like the treatment of Native youth in America’s boarding school system  throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries have become widely accepted instances of genocide. Moreover, the policies and attitudes towards Native people have dramatically shifted over the years to the point that in 2012 the city councils of both Minneapolis and St. Paul condemned the treatment of the Dakota following the 1862 war as genocide.

These public declarations fall well short of a legal threshold, though. When the time came in 1948 to establish the crime of genocide as codified law much of the basis for defining genocide that Lemkin established in Axis Rule was diluted. Instead of a legal framework that recognized crimes like political, social, or cultural genocide, the newly established United Nations limited the scope of genocide almost entirely to physical genocide, the targeted killing and elimination of a group. 

The Soviet Union is usually charged with watering down the language found in the UN Genocide Convention, but in his book Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes scholar, William Schabas, points out that many of the Soviet’s concerns were equally shared by the American delegation. There was a desire to avoid future prosecution of acts committed by the American government that would clearly meet the threshold under Lemkin’s expanded definition of genocide, especially as it related to policies towards Native and Black groups in the United States. 

As the United Nations was coming into its own in 1945, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was mobilizing itself and its constituents to bring forth injustices against the Black community. Policies like poll taxes, literacy exams (to that end, Jim Crow laws as a whole that disenfranchised Black America while establishing and preserving segregation), along with systemic violence and economic policies meant to dehumanize Black Americans were laid out in a petition to the UN that made the case for genocide. The movement was called We Charge Genocide.

The movement culminated in a petition delivered to the UN General Assembly in 1951. It reads as though it could have come from today’s headlines :

On Killing Members of a Group:

Our evidence concerns the thousands of Negroes who over the years have been beaten to death on chain gangs and in the back rooms of sheriff’s offices, in the cells of county jails, in precinct police stations  and on city streets, who have been framed and murdered by sham legal forms and by a legal bureaucracy.

In regards to Economic Genocide:

We shall prove that the object of this genocide, as of all genocide, is the perpetuation of economic and political power by the few through the destruction of political protest by the many.  Its method is to demoralize and divide an entire nation; its end is to increase the profits and unchallenged control by a reactionary clique.

Particularly harrowing is a passage discussing the evidence the CRC intended to bring forward, which feels especially pertinent to today’s climate:

Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet.  To many an American the police are the government, certainly its most visible representative.  We submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of Negroes has become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy.

The petition goes on to call on the UN to examine the case — to complete the investigation of genocide, but it never came. Almost immediately, We Charge Genocide was disregarded by the American delegation. Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States and the first US delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights wrote of the petition “It will do great harm at home because the answers to untruths and half-truths are always less dramatic than the assertions,” identifying the authors as communist instigators rather than the victims of systemic violence and racism. 

Ultimately, and not surprisingly, the petition went nowhere. The United States, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council with its veto power, clearly had enough influence to ensure the petition would never receive an acknowledgement from the UN.

We Charge Genocide has served as a catalyst for further recognition of Black genocide. The banner has now been taken up by other groups who have used the spirit of the 1951 petition to call attention to contemporary issues impacting Black communities: policies of forced sterilization throughout the 20th century, challenges to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the disproportionate rates of incarceration amongst people of color.

We Charge Genocide has re-emerged through the work of a non-profit group in Chicago. Advocating for marginalized communities impacted by policy violence, We Charge Genocide connects the current calls for law enforcement accountability in America’s third-largest city, naming the very injustices laid out in 1951.

The question of genocide has largely been ignored in the nearly seven decades since We Charge Genocide began. The movement itself received little coverage in the media, and it has been largely forgotten. This raises challenging questions: Why are Americans open to acknowledging one genocide but ignore another? As our understanding and willingness to comprehend episodes of our painful past continue to expand, will there come a point in which the conditions listed in the We Charge Genocide’s petition are accepted for what they are — genocide?

Recent polls have indicated eroding support for Black Lives Matters and similar campaigns calling for racial justice protests, so the potential for Americans reckoning with another aspect from our genocidal past seems unlikely, for now. 

Joe Eggers is the research and outreach coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.

In an interview with Channel 4 news, Angela Davis, leading civil rights and political activist since the 1960s, underscored: “This moment holds possibilities for change we have never before experienced.” There has been a lot of debate about what makes this moment different and if George Floyd’s death will be the one that changes the world as we know it. While no one can be sure what the future holds, we can point to ways in which this moment is indeed unique.

In the two weeks following the death of George Floyd, support for Black Lives Matter in the US increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years (Cohn and Quealy 2020). According to Pew Research Center, as of June 2020, the majority of Americans (67%) support the Black Lives Matter movement. And more Americans than ever are vocally showing their support on social media, through mutual aid and community care, and especially on the ground at protests.

We have seen bikers block off roads to stop traffic for marches, medics protecting and serving their community, protestors helping each other to safety amidst police firing bullets and teargas into crowds. In Minneapolis, we have seen “community” at its best –as more than just a feeling, but an action. We have seen people standing, sitting, kneeling, and marching in unity, demanding justice because without justice, we will never have peace.

In Minneapolis, currently ground zero for the movement, people continue to show up in extraordinary numbers. People across the nation have been using their unique talents and skills to show up in countless ways for BLM. People of all races, religions, gender identities, and ages have united on their streets to stand together as one to demand justice for the Black community. The sheer magnitude combined with the diversity of the current movement makes this moment unique.

Beyond Minneapolis, in Hawaii for example, local surfers have held paddle out ceremonies for BLM. In Aurora, Colorado, locals have been holding violin vigils for Elijah McClain, and in Philadelphia, skaters have organized skateboard marches for BLM.

Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in U.S. history. Across the globe, people are standing in solidarity with BLM in the U.S. and demanding that their own nations also confront racism and white supremacy. The rebellion was televised but the revolution will not be. The very things that will change people, will not be caught on film but caught on the ground, in our communities.

We must continue to demand justice for people, regardless of where one comes from. This is only the beginning, so if you are skating, skate for the justice for Black lives. If you are shooting hoops, shoot hoops for the justice for Black lives. If you are dancing, dance for the justice for Black lives.

Come as you are. Come in your own way. Come out for Layleen Polanco and Tony McDade. Come out for Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. Come out for Philando Castille and George Floyd. Wherever you are and whatever you do, just make sure you keep coming.

We are Sociology graduate students based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and live about two miles from 38th and Chicago where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police. 

Below, we showcase some of the ways in which the Minneapolis community has shown up for Black Lives Matter:

June/July 2020 What can you say…it’s Family: From infants to elders, toddlers to teens, protests in Minneapolis have been filled with families marching together. The youngest generations are already participating in the fight for racial justice. Their elders are showing these young justice warriors the way and they are wasting no time. This is their future.

July 2020 Roll for Justice: On July 4th, rather than taking part in traditional 4th of July festivities, locals rolled through the streets of Minneapolis from City Hall to Bde Maka Ska in a unique protest organized by MIRAC dedicated to Black Lives Matter. For roughly five miles, community members and friends grabbed the nearest wheels they could find and rolled for change.

July 2020 Traditions and Solidarity: Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, a traditional Mexica-Nahua (Aztec) cultural group, has spent much of the summer marching alongside thousands of protesters offering danzas and songs. During the National Mother’s March in St. Paul, families who have lost loved ones to police violence across the nation came together. Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli expressed solidarity, tradition, safe space, and unifying demands for justice.

May 2020 Leave the Porch Light On: In On the Front Porch, Black Life in Full View, Audra D. S. Burch said it best: “a stage straddling the home and the street, a structural backdrop of meaningful life moments.” In Minneapolis, community elders frequently stand in solidarity cheering protesters on from their balconies, front doors, and backyards. In fact, during the height of the protests, community members called on their neighbors to leave their porch lights on to help protesters feel safe getting home throughout the night. Whether it was a lone voice showing support from their balcony, families with young children waving, playing music, and providing water to protestors, or simply leaving the porch light on to show that someone was home and that they cared, community members expressed solidarity in their own way.

July 2020 Community Taking Care of Community: The Minnesota Freedom Fighters, an independent “elite security unit dedicated to protecting the citizens and businesses of the Twin Cities urban areas” has spent much of the summer working to ensure the safety of all protestors and their communities. Their objective “is not to be the police, but the bridge to link the police and the community together.”

May 2020: A Toast to the Graduates: Here’s to those in the Class of 2020 who spent their graduation days on the streets fighting for a better future. Congratulations, keep on fighting!

June 2020: Scenes from Floyd Town: On weekends, 38th and Chicago, now locally known as Floyd Town: The Free State of George Floyd, is regularly filled with community gatherings, artists, live performances, barbeques, donation drives, and pick-up basketball games. Floyd Town has become a sacred place for the Black community in Minneapolis. It has become a place of tragedy and resilience, a place of mourning and celebration, a place of reflection and organizing. May Floyd Town continue to bring power, joy, peace, resilience, and fight for those who continue to come as they are.

Anna DalCortivo is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her scholarly interests include crime, law, and punishment, social movements, and race. She is currently working on projects involving juvenile decarceration, the prison abolition movement, and All Square (a Minneapolis nonprofit social enterprise that invests in people with criminal records).

Mi’Chael N. Wright is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her primary research focuses on sociology of media, sociology of mental health, collective memory and trauma, and identity. She is specifically interested in how digital communities, which can be simultaneously encouraging and hostile, constitute the identity development of Black and Brown adolescent girls.

All Photos Taken by Anna DalCortivo

As genocide scholars we know systemic racism. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s Declaration of the Prevention of Genocide has emphasized genocide’s connection with systemic racism, calling for the prevention of “persistent patterns of racial discrimination and other systemic violations of human rights that could lead to violent conflict and genocide.” We know that one of the critical early warning signs of genocide is a legacy of discrimination and persecution.

As genocide scholars, we have explored the origins and consequences of violence. We have looked at the historical, or rather modern, roots of racism (Weitz 2003), and how ordinary citizens and law enforcement officers are mobilized into extreme forms of violence (Browning 1992). We have learned how governments and individuals legitimize violence, often using fear to justify their actions (Straus 2006). We have learned about the banality of evil (Arendt 1964) and how seemingly neutral organizations can participate in mass violence (Kühl 2016). We have learned that just because a violent act is legal, doesn’t mean it is moral.

Classic social theorist, Max Weber (1946), defined the state by its monopolization on the legitimate use of violence. He argued that the state can protect its citizens from violence and commit violence against them or the citizens of other states. Yet in the era following WWII, the right of the state to perpetuate violence against its own people (particularly unarmed civilians) was questioned by the international community. As genocide scholars have discussed, Hitler’s murderous campaign against the Jews was not illegal, and while norms were certainly changing during this time, genocide was not an established crime (Savelsberg 2010). 

It is only more recently, with the development and globalization of human rights and humanitarian law, that state sovereignty has begun to diminish. As a result, episodes of mass violence committed by states against their own populations are increasingly becoming understood and tried as crimes. We have seen this with the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for both Rwanda (1994-2015) and the Former Yugoslavia (1993-2017). More recently, we have seen this with the International Criminal Court’s involvement with Darfur (2005)  and the International Court of Justice with Myanmar (2019). 

Yet, due to the extreme nature of genocide, scholars are often hesitant to explore and comment on other forms of violence that do not amount to genocide. But in doing so, we risk turning a blind eye to the various forms of ongoing violence being committed in countries such as the US. As those who understand violence to its most heart-wrenching detail, it is our responsibility to share our knowledge and speak out against the injustices happening in our own communities.

While it is never easy to study genocide, it is much easier to study violence when you are removed from it. As a result, scholars like myself often study episodes of mass violence that are either historically or geographically removed from our own lives. However, the knowledge from this field can and must be used to explore and critically analyze American history and White violence against Black Americans. CHGS will contribute to this conversation through a series of articles that discuss contemporary and historical forms of violence in the US in our series entitled: Anti-Black Violence in the US.

In this series we at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will explore the connection between social movements and genocide, share photo essays from Black Lives Matter Protests around the country, and interrogate the violence being perpetrated against Black Americans. It is with this series that our blog will turn inwards, exploring our own backyard and the violence being committed here. It is our hope that this series will begin to explore both what our field can learn from the Black Lives Matter movement and the horrific death of Minneapolis resident, George Floyd and what we may contribute.

Jillian LaBranche is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and a Research Assistant at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests broadly include violence, knowledge, collective memory, and comparative methods. Her research seeks to understand how societies that recently experienced large-scale political violence teach about this violence to the next generation.